The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend by Cassandra Pybus
238 pages
Published 2002
Read from March 3 to March 4
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
This book lacked the powerful beauty of Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost, as well as the off-putting exhibitionism of Dan White's The Cactus Eaters.
Overall it was pretty good and largely unremarkable, a competent
travelogue wrapped in a thin coating of historical biography, ending
with a too-pat, unsatisfying, and (to me) unsupported "She lived happily
ever after."
Not much to add to it, beyond my nonplussed discomfort
with how much space is devoted to the body image and eating disorders of
Pybus' traveling companions. Not at all what I expected. It's an
important topic to address with unflinching honesty, sure, but this is
supposed to be a book about following the footsteps of a semi-legendary
figure and researching her history. During the middle portion of the
book, eating disorders completely take over the narrative. I won't say
something so androcentric and privileged as "Why is she even talking
about this at all?", but damn, I seem to have hit a streak of somewhat
misleadingly packaged books lately.
I will say Pybus' depiction
disabused me of my naive romantic idea of the British Columbia
hinterlands; those alluring blank spaces on the Rand McNally are trashy
clear-cut wastelands more often than they are trackless, unspoiled
wildlands, it would seem. I still want to head up the Al-Can Highway one
day, but at least now I know not to expect pure uncut majesty.
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